We generally refrain from analysing the tournament meta until after the tournament is over, but there is a hero we feel should be covered immediately. Oracle is currently the most popular pick and one of the most successful heroes in DreamLeague Season 11 with a win rate close to 70%.

The DreamLeague Major’s group stages concluded after a packed, two days of games. Mineski snuffed China’s chances to land four teams in the upper bracket, and Team Secret again looks like the strongest team out of the pack, sweeping a group that included Team Liquid.

After the last several hero releases, Mars can feel like old school Dota. There are no tree jumping abilities, spell duplications, vector targeting or transformations into a ball of pain. Instead, we have a hero that fits right in, and it is a great change of pace.

Vici Gaming confidently secured their spot in the upcoming Major in the last week’s StarLadder ImbaTV Minor. Despite questionable play-off format, it was still a very enjoyable tournament which had enough great games to serve as an appetizer before DreamLeague Season 11.

This next week, in partnership with Loot.Bet, we'll be featuring the Starladder Minor games on the front page. We'll take a look at the next day's matches, Loot.Bet's odds, and call out which matchups have favorable odds. Yesterday, anyone who bet on Flying Penguins to win vs. RNG, at 9:1 odds, had a decent payday.

Viper was dominating the professional and high level pub scenes. Valve has acknowledged that he was a problematic hero, along with a variety of buffs to many unpicked characters. While the patch itself is pretty small, we believe it will result in disproportionate changes to the meta.

Ever since Grimstroke was released, players started theorycrafting interesting and effective combinations to use with his ultimate, Soulbind. While initially many concentrated on doubling high-impact, single-target nukes or disables, people soon discovered that coupling it with pseudo-AoE and bouncing abilities can yield amazing results.

Top tier teams were spread between two tournaments this week, with a total of 20 teams competing in high-profile LAN tournaments and giving us a lot of data to work with. We’ve written several posts about the current state of the meta, highlighting how the 7.20-7.21b transition widened it through adding new viable heroes to top levels of play, and our statements regarding wider meta hold true.

7.21b slightly altered the metagame in the highest skill bracket, returning some heroes to the game, while nerfing the most successful carries. Overall the carry meta is in a decently healthy place right now, with a good variety of heroes.

For a moment in 7.20 it looked like the historical utility offlaners are here to stay—heroes like Beastmaster, Centaur Warrunner, Dark Seer and Tidehunter were very popular, creating space and initiating teamfights for their teammates, while building auras and utility items. This nostalgic period didn’t last long and once again we are seeing the return of greediness in the hard lane.

Supports frequently go unnoticed in Dota. It takes a lot of practice and dedication to make flashy, effective plays. We’ll dive into what support heroes work well in the current meta, with some strong enough to be useful regardless of other picks.

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